 If I don't create the best thing that I could possibly create, it's over. My life is over, this career is over. All I am is this. I'm a creator, I'm an artist. I don't got nothing else going. This is what I do. If I don't put my heart and soul into what I'm doing in this studio right now, then I won't eat, you know what I'm saying? And my life has to change based on the quality of what this is. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brandon Sean. And I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. And today we have a very special guest and artist by the name of Lawrence Matthews. What's up, Lawrence? What's up? What's up? What's up? How's it going? Hey, it's going great, man. Glad to have you. Appreciate you on the platform, man. I think this conversation today is going to be valuable for the artist and also your future fans, man. The ones you have already and the ones you're definitely about to gain with the music that I've heard. Let's start here though, right? You're a new artist, like super new artist. Yet at the same time, you aren't a new artist because you're rebranding, you're the middle of a rebrand. Can you talk about where you were before and why you're rebranding under your, you know, your government right now? Lawrence Matthews, what brings that about? So yeah, first and foremost, thank you all for having me on here, whatever I appreciate it. And so I would say, so for maybe 10 years since I got out of high school, I was like making music under the name Dawn Lifted for a while. And it was more this kind of alternative hip-hop kind of base thing. It was kind of based on a lot of the experiences I was having at the time and like the music I was making. And like I started that in Memphis and kind of built my career up doing that and also fine art and filmmaking. So like I had a whole career, you know, existing as that artist and kind of like worked my way up. But like literally like 10 years, you know what I mean? Like being a man where I was from in the scene that I was from and like having a lot of different firsts that had never happened and like went through that whole everything that you always hear, you know, as artists that you're trying to kind of like bring into fruition, I kind of got there. And so when I finally got there, I ended up, you know, funding my own tour and going on tour and then getting signed to a regional kind of record label. And like for me at that time, I was like, yo, my whole life is changing. Like all of these beautiful things have been to come. I finally have a shot. I've been working for years and years and years to get my foot in the door to be able to like do this. And I finally got my foot in the door and it's not to say that it wasn't like what I thought it would be, but at the same time, it was like one of those things where you just kind of lose control. Like I have been independent and kind of running my own shit for years. And so you kind of relinquish a lot of control. You don't really know as much, you know, what's your first go at it. You're from a place, like I'm from Memphis. So you're from a place where there's not a lot of industry. You know, Memphis has a lot of music history, but we don't have a lot of infrastructure. So you don't really learn the things that you need to learn. And a lot of times when you sign paperwork and you're doing these different things, it's definitely based in a space of desperation. And so for me, it was definitely that it wasn't necessarily like I was desperate, desperate, desperate, but it was like, yo, if I don't do this, I maybe will not have a shot. It took me 10 years to get to this place, to have one person wanna do something with me. You know what I mean? So you end up, you know, signing paperwork and I ended up putting out a record with that label. And it was cool. And then they didn't pick up the option. And so, and also even within that, I had kind of realized that maybe I didn't wanna be signed to a label. And it wasn't the way that I wanted to run my career. I'm very hands on with everything. Like I produce my own stuff. I write my own stuff. I'm recording my own stuff. Like make all my own content, direct my videos, write my videos, edit my videos. Like that's who I was. That's who I was. And so to be in this space where like, I didn't really have much control was very hard for me. And so after that, you know, it kind of just got me to this space where like I had created something and worked on something for 10 years that kind of was bringing me unhappiness to be honest with you. It just wasn't what I thought it would be, you know what I mean? And I realized how much it pulls from you and how much it takes from you and how much this game is what it is to where I was like, I wanna do this my own way. Like I wanna start this all over. And there's a lot of other factors in there. A lot of emotional things, a lot of like interpersonal things wrapped into that or whatever and what those experiences were. You know, we can talk about that more in detail, but I eventually got to the space where I was like, looking in the mirror and not really recognizing myself, not really understanding how I found myself here and like how I had lost control or something that I had built, you know, for years and years. And so I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna tear it apart. And so once that option thing happened, I like me and my management party ways that I had at the time, I fired my booking and I went all the way back to like square one and like was like, yo, I'm just gonna make music as Lawrence Matthews with no limits, no bounds, no boundaries on what I'm trying to do creatively. Nobody in my ear telling me what to do, trying to force me to change what I'm trying to do. And I'm just gonna be me in ways that I ain't never been me since I was maybe a little kid. You know what I mean? When you think about trying to reconnect with your inner child and these things, like I was like, I'm just gonna do that. And so I started making music from that place. And so the album that you know, where we're gonna share with the world, in the near future came from all of that and like pulls from all of those experiences and a lot of the darker stuff that I experienced along the journey to free myself. You know what I mean? From business things, from interpersonal things, from my environment and where I'm from. Cause again, I'm from Memphis. So it's a certain type of energy, you know what I mean? And so that was kind of where I ended up starting to get to that transition. And of course there's more details and we can get into that, you know, whenever, but that's kind of the initial thing. So yeah. Man, you said a mouthful, man. You got me thinking about so many different things. I think the first place I wanna just start though is hold up, hold up. You're telling me, just say Lime Like Honey, for instance. Your track that just dropped on February 26th. You produced that, obviously performed, you know, as the artists wrote it and everything like that. But you're telling me the music video for it as well? Like you directed it? Me and my brother shot that and directed that and edited that together. Like a lot of stuff is in-house and we ain't really got no choice. Like I learned to record the engineer. Also that song, we recorded it in my dining room in my crib. So like the album was made in my dining room because again, like we went. I mean, that's what I was always doing anyway. Like when we talk about, you know, artists and these different dynamics, like when I got my first advance, I didn't spend it on nothing but buying studio equipment because I knew that at some point these people could probably take this from me. And if I go to these studios or I get connected to they people, then I'm relying on them to make music. And I never like being rely, like I don't like relying on nobody to be able to make music. So I just bought a bunch of stuff. Let me stop you, let me stop you. I appreciate everything you're saying but why it's important that you did all that stuff is because your shit is hard, bro. Like knock on lock. Like it's actually shocking to hear and see like the quality of the video as well. Like all right, hearing dope music from artists or you wanna hear that, that's entry, that's status quo. Then you hear dope music and he produced it. Like, okay, that's on special. Then when you see the visual on top of that and you're saying that you directed it and like that's your thing and put that together, like based on the whole package of everything that we're aware of, you know, like the vibes for your project coming up and everything. Hey, we just to be real, we assumed you were signed, bro. Yeah, we had a bet on it. Obviously we lost, you know what I'm saying? But we did have a bet on it. I ain't got no deal, no paperwork, nothing. When we made that, I didn't have nothing. That was probably the worst time of my life when I made the album. I didn't have nothing, no management, no booking, nobody looking at me, no prospects, nothing. I was, I essentially had fucked my career off when I made that album, you know what I mean? And so the quality of what you're hearing is one you hear in a person who is free and can do anything that they wanna do. So they gonna do it. The sampling and all that stuff, like I didn't have no budget. There wasn't no budget there. It was just make the best music you can make right now with the resources that you have. And so I just, we went into the studio and did that. And so I had to shout out my homey C major. He did my drum programming cause I didn't know how to use an NPC at the time. But I would dictate what I wanted and we would come up with the things and he would play it for me. But I would like sitting there and really compose this music and be like, hey, we using this sample this way, chop it like this, da, da, da, da. Like, okay, let's do whatever, whatever. But I want to shout him out cause like I wouldn't, he was my only partner in making this project. It was me and him in the studio every day for, I mean, from November, 2021 to like August, 2022. It was just me and him in the studio, in my dining room, which is the studio, but we was just in there working on this project. And then also when I said, you hear the person who's free, you also hear a person is like, if I don't create the best thing that I could possibly create, it's over. My life is over, this career is over, all I am is this. I'm a creator, I'm an artist, I don't got nothing else going. This is what I do. If I don't put my heart and soul into what I'm doing in the studio right now, then I won't eat, you know what I'm saying? And my life has to change based on the quality of what this is. We made this album to free me. You see what I'm saying? To free me not only from previous business circumstances or whatever, but to free me from the life that I was in. And I'm currently kind of in, I'm in flux right now. Like again, I'm in New York right now. It's like I wouldn't have been able to do that back then. You see what I'm saying? There was nobody there. This music has gotten me here. So the fact that I even have management at this point is because he heard a song that we put out just to put it out. You see what I'm saying? And so yeah, like what you said, I ain't signed, I ain't got nothing. And you know, we still building this ship. Like we building this plan while it's flying for real, for real. All we have was the music. I want to drop a quick note for anybody who has a fan problem. And not just any old fan problem, but the type of fan problem that we encountered after helping a lot of artists go viral, have a lot of success, get a lot of streams, but still not being able to know who exactly are my fans? How do I reach them? How do I actually leverage that to excel, merge, go to a show? Because that's where Spotify leaves us without knowing who our real people are. Same for social media. If you've had this problem, I'll tell you how we've been solving it. And our agency for a while now, in the pro version is just now being released to be accessible to any artist or manager out there. I'm talking about Forever Fan. A lot of the campaigns and successes that y'all have heard us talk about on this channel have been powered by that software that's made finding and understanding your true fans simple, so they support you with their pockets. Cause we all need a little money in this music thing. And now they're making it available to our audience for only $1 at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels, no labels with an S at the end. And you gotta put in the code, no labels, zero, two. All right? Now, look, the DSPs, the social media platforms, I think they've shown us how much they care about artists for a while now. So at this point, we can all play naive or actually do something about it. Bet on yourself at foreverfanmusic.com slash no labels. And again, put in the code, no labels, zero, two to get initial access for only $1. Let's get back to this episode. Yeah, that's hard, man. I mean, it's dope, man, cause it's a testament to some things we've kind of said where, like you said, like you're technically starting to get ground zero in a sense of positioning, but because of mentality, you're not really at ground zero, right? Like you're ahead of where the typical artist would be. But you said something earlier that I wanted to ask you about. Well, I know you're from Memphis. Are you still like in Memphis? Like you're actively out there living there and things like that. So- Yeah, I'm still back. Yeah. Okay, so I know you had mentioned when you were under the other name, you said you were kind of making like alternative rap. You built a name for yourself in the local Memphis scene. Now, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've known about the local Memphis scene based on who's come out the last couple of years, an alternative rapper being popular there just isn't something I would have kind of expected. So can you one talk about, from your perspective, what the Memphis music scene is actually like? And then too, how were you this alternative rapper able to build a name for yourself in the city that's predominantly like trap music oriented? So the city is interesting in their way. So a lot of it's perception, right? So like the people that see and look into the city, the only people who truly do make it out are trap and street artists, right? Because there's different funding and there's different come-ups that they have to deal with. They aren't maybe the traditional come-ups like you can break your record in a strip club, you can break your record in the clubs, you can break your record these different places. And then a lot of times when you do get some attention to be real with you, if you do get some attention in Memphis, you know, appealing to a certain element or whatever, certain people come and snatch you up real quick. You know what I mean? We've seen it with a little really like Godia come and get you, these people come and get you and put you where you need to be. That doesn't exist in a scene that I came from. So for me, I built my kind of name in the gallery. So I went to art school and graduated like Dean's List top of my class, like art star, all that kind of stuff and had like a art career, like as a painter and a photographer and I did public art too and I still do public art from time to time. But I had a career as a visual artist and was like, you know, going back and forth between that and music. So when I started building my fan base, I tried to go some of those more traditional routes where I was performing at the clubs and the places and the little speakeasies and spots that like people kind of built their careers at, right? Specifically when you like into like the outside which is like through the poetry scene and stuff like that. And like nobody was fucking me. Nobody liked what I was doing. Nobody wanted to give me a shot. Nobody was fucking me. So I said, I say less, I'm gonna go to the galleries. And so I found a spot that allowed me to rent the space for like $60 a night. And so I started doing shows at this place and then hanging my art up and curating like site-specific art installations that was connected to the music in this space. And it was one of a kind back then. They just do this all the time now. Back then though, we talking 2013, 2014, 2012 and all up in that era of time. Like I started kind of doing that in first show, 50 people, second show, 100 people, third show, 150 people to the point where we got it to the point where we couldn't do shows there no more. And then we started branching out and like partnering with like some of the larger museums and institutions that are based in the city to do shows and to do partnerships and things. So I built my kind of fan base in the arts community, not in the necessarily like the community community. You see what I'm saying? And so like Memphis is like 64% black and a lot of that honestly is impoverished or whatever. And so you kind of either have to speak to that or be present in that world. I didn't really grow up in that world per se. I didn't grow up wealthy and none like that at all. Like I grew up lower middle class or whatever out kind of on the outskirts of the city, but I would come into the city because of my art career. And I also was a filmmaker. I used to do documentaries about different neighborhoods and different issues that was taking place in the city. So I initially was like famous in where I come from as an artist and then started making music. And I was always making music. I've been making music since I was in high school, but at a certain point the popularity and the music and the populated art start kind of going like this. And so I found myself in this intersection where I had a lot of white fans to be 100% with you. Like making the music that I was making before, the audience was mostly white folks and alt people. You know what I mean? Like alt people, but maybe street folks weren't aware of me like that. But then at the same time, I would be like undercover all the local magazines and I would get all the press and all the articles because I existed in this intersection of fine art, film, music. And of course there's like this inherent like racism that's kind of built into that. Like you're the different nigga, you know what I mean? So like there's some aspect of like being aware of that. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Is that how that goes? Because they want to reward you when you stand out from the bunch. And so that's a thing to be real, especially where I come from, that's a big thing. But a lot of people who had ability to platform me supported the music. And then on top of that, I ended up like helping start a nonprofit that then opened the gallery space in like Orange Mount. If you don't know nothing about Orange Mount, Orange Mount was like the oldest black neighborhood, like original black neighborhood, like slaves were able to get that land and then build their communities there. So I started our gallery there with some other people that I was dealing with at the time that I don't deal with no more. But I was able to like, yeah, I was like, no, like super known for all of these different things. And depending on who you talk to, they would know me for one thing or another. But as the music kind of kept going and kind of kept going, I got more and more known, more and more successful, but not in a mainstream kind of way. It's very scene-based in Memphis. And Memphis is very territorial in terms of neighborhoods. It's North Memphis, South Memphis. You got Orange Mount, you got White Haven, Binghampton, but then you've got Midtown, Downtown, East Memphis, Germantown, Cardiffville, so on and so forth. So I was very popular in the like, Downtown, Midtown scene, but a lot of that environment, a lot of the people who were in that environment dictate a whole lot. And so when you think about, you know, what you were saying about like what Memphis is kind of known for, like that's a fact. I, if it's me, would be the first non- kind of street artists to emerge out of there. It's tons of us though. It's not just me. The Memphis art scene is just as diverse as any other scene, or the Memphis music scene is just as diverse as anything. There's soul musicians, R&B musicians, rap musicians of all different types, street folks, street like, it's chances and Kendrick's and Kanye's and all these different, it's those type of architect, artists, there's the super 90s retro kind of dudes, there's like the super, it's everything, but they just don't get no shot. You see what I'm saying? And nobody cares about them because there's a perception on the city that is projected on to us. And then we replicate it back to the world. You see what I'm saying? So we don't validate anything. We all sit there in the city and say, we want some different, we want some different, we want more. And it's not to say we're not taken away from the street narratives or the trap narratives or these different sounds, but there is more of the story that needs to be told that hasn't had an opportunity to be told. And a lot of times the people who do get to share end up end up being producers a lot of times. They end up being producers because they can make those beats. They take Keith is Murphysboro, but that sound is a Memphis sound. You know what I mean? And they are cut through. My homie, Cody, Cody produced for SZA right now. Cody's his own artist, but he make music that sound different than what people would expect. And so when you do come up to people and you don't have a traditional Memphis sound, which I can argue with people about what that actually is, they kind of write you off. They should be like, ah, this is not that. You know what I mean? But when y'all hear the record, you know what I mean? And like even the record that we just put out, I'm like, honey, that's Memphis stuff. That's Delta, you know, Delta blues samples, soul samples, all of these things. That's Memphis stuff. But most people who are outside the city recognize Three Six Mafia is that, but there is that stacks sound. There is the music that comes before that. And that's the music that I tapped into to make this project. And so I know that's a long answer, but like it is a very convoluted thing that we talk about all the time. Because Memphians is like, how do we add to this story? How do we add to the narrative? Because the people who do know Memphis know us for very specific things. And it's not to say that those things don't matter or they don't exist, but it's more to the story. You know what I mean? And I'm hoping that I can be one of the many people who then share that with the world. Because I do think once that doorbreak open, you're gonna see a thousand artists behind me, not even behind me, but alongside of me who also have their unique Memphian story to tell. And it's gonna change the way that people view the city. And it's gonna open it up just like any other neighborhood, you know, in Chicago or LA, like when Kendrick came through Compton, it changed the way that people saw Compton. It was a thing and I feel like that's coming soon. It has to, like I'm working for that to be the case. Kendrick is a good example. I see exactly what you're saying. Cause I feel like a lot of scenes have that, right? You got something that gets popular as in your scene, but then there's all these other artists that exist that feel constricted or can't get opportunities because people are looking for that, like when I go to that particular place. And then Kendrick, as you said, breaking out, he definitely tapped into something different and helped people realize, okay, Compton can look different, feel different, et cetera. So, you know, in where you lie musically versus the rest of the scene and what we heard, man is, I mean, it's definitely that. It's different, it's interesting. So it's not like the traditional Southern, cause now trap feels Southern, right? Because that's been so popularized, right? But when you get into the blues aspect of things, and then if you think a little, and then you hear, you know, just your accent, of course, looking at your imagery. And then, even if you think about a little bit of dungeon family type vibes, it feels like that feels like the energy that you're tapping into. For show, I think, you know, I listen to, I mean, I always was a big fan of Outkast. Outkast is one of the first rap acts I ever heard in my life. Like when I was a kid, my dad was playing that Tupac and like a bunch of like older hip hop, like Run DMC and like all that kind of stuff. But like when I think back about like my first introductions to like rap music, it was Tupac and it was Outkast. You know what I mean? In those early Outkast records. And so for me, when I think of what Southern music sounds like to me, it sounds like when you listen to Outkast records, you hear the amalgamation of influences that come from the South. You hear the church, you hear the blues, you hear rock and roll, you hear all these things. These are essential elements. Every jazz, every single American music comes from that pipeline, whether it's New Orleans to Mississippi to Memphis. And then it goes up to Chicago. Then it goes up to Harlem. Then it goes out to South Central Los Angeles. You see what I'm saying? And so for me, what I want to do, and then again, like for me, it mirrors my own personal journey. Me tapping back into who Lawrence Matthews is. Let me take this genre that I love so much and tap back into it and take this region that I love so much and tap back into the originalness of this thing. So let me go and get these blues musicians and sample them in these like rock because it then comes into the rock like this old, because it sounds like that, but it's not really that. It's still blues. It's just like electrified in different ways. Especially for Lime Light, honey, that Hoot Your Belly song that we sampled or whatever the way it sound is like we're channeling that and pulling from that. When you think about like, and I know Howlin' Wolf is not from, I think he was from the South, but then he moved. But Howlin' Wolf, there's records where I'm referencing him just as much as I'm referencing like ODB or just as much as I'm referencing Jay-Z or just as much as I'm referencing Andre or Goodie Mob or UGK or any of these people like that album. It is a Southern album and I'm a Southern artist and my narrative is that, but the sonics of it is me pulling from everything that I love about hip hop, but building it on a palette or foundation of our Southern contributions to music. You know what I mean? And again, like you said, Outcast is that for sure. Like people, I remember when I was younger, folks were like, Howlin' Wolf is weird. I'm like, this is insane. And when you go back and look at those videos, look at how groundbreaking those videos are to this day. The representation, the way that they like pulling all of these different influences together, there is nobody close. None of us are gonna get that. Like they had something special. We can only aspire to it. And for me, that was me. Like this album is very much like me trying to live in a tradition and like live up to the tradition of the amazing, amazing music that has come from Memphis, that has come from Atlanta, that has come from Houston, St. Louis. You know, I mean, even DC, even. Like I thought DC, you know, they right there too. So definitely, definitely. What's your favorite Outcast video? Where are we on that? Ooh. Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks is crazy. Bombs over back that is also crazy. That's my number one right there. That's my number one. When you go back, it's crazy looking at video. And not to like to carry it on, but like when you ask about that, right? There's a bunch of Outcast references in the Lime Like Honey video. We were pulling specifically from like Player's Ball and like, what's that first jump that they put out? Southern Playlist, like the single or whatever. When you go watch that video, there's shots where we were like paying homage to like shots from that video because when you go back and I wrote this in one of the statements that I sent out, we wanted something that felt naturalistic, you know what I mean? And when you go back before Outcast became like fantasy and it was like all of these things happening, if you go look at those early Goodie Mob and Outcast videos, it's literally just them in their neighborhood. It's just them where they're coming from. Representing these different places and the people in those spaces. When you go back and you look at Ludacris in TI early videos, not the TI where he was like trying to like be saucy or whatever, but like that. When he kind of tapped into like, hey, I'm not ashamed to be a trap nigga. Here's the trap. You know what I mean? Like at first he was trying to do some different stuff. They had a nip to him beats and stuff. But like, when you go back and you look at Ludacris, you look at like, what's your fantasy video? And then you look at like, it's a few of them joints where like, it's just him in Atlanta. And I was like, niggas ain't really did this in this way in a long time. Everything has been about like glitz and glam and all this stuff. And I was like, bro, I ain't got that. I ain't rich, I ain't signed, I ain't got nothing. What can we shoot? What do, and then I was just like, oh, like let's just shoot what we do for real. Like our family members, like everybody in that video is family, friends, loved ones, people, restaurants, and black businesses that I actually go to actually hang out with youth, youth organizations that I actually work with. Like it's all actual connectivity in every single frame of that video, whether it be, you know, what's down on Bill Street, which we had to represent that or whatever. But like everything is very tangible, real stuff. All the homies that was hooping, them are my homies we hoop on the weekends. Like it was real Memphis life for us. You see what I'm saying? It ain't everybody life, but it's definitely ours. And that was something that I like saw when I looked at the early outcast, looked at early Ludacris, the early like, even the Memphis stuff or whatever, like folks gangsta walking and all that. It's like, this is that, like let's do that. Let's not try to pretend that we got more going on than we got going on. We are here right now. And let's present here right now to the world because most people are here right now. You see what I'm saying? Most people don't have a G-Wag and most people don't have all of this rapper aesthetic stuff that works on social media. We don't, I don't have that. That's not my life, you know what I mean? But what can I, what I can do is present my real life to you and where I am in this moment, whether that's in the lyrics, whether that's in the videos and I'm gonna keep doing that. You know what I mean? Just in my own way. Cause that's what I believe in, like just representing this place that don't get to be. It's always like the horror storage, you know what I mean? But it's like, it's everything. It's a nuanced identity, you know what I mean? So yeah. I love that, bro. I was literally just talking to an artist like last week, sometime last week and he was from somewhere in the country of Georgia from the same place as Phil Mobb. And I was, I was watching his video and I was like, this is dope, but no one where you from. And then hearing the actual sonics, the sonics were representative. I was like, bro, you need to show more of where you from. Like he was trying to do like fancier videos, a little bit more fantasy. And I was just like, no man, show more because for somebody who's not in the country, like for a dude in New York, you know what I mean? Like this looks like a whole nother world. You're showing them something that they can't see tangibly in their real life. In the same way you might be in the country watching somebody in New York and be like, yo, that feels like a different world. That looks crazy. Like show people that because that helps you stand out versus trying to feel like everybody else. And that's what I got from watching you. It definitely felt. I was like, man, you're doing exactly what I was talking to that guy about doing. I could feel the energy. I felt like I knew more about you just from watching the visuals along with the music and everything. But like just watching the visuals, I feel like I know more about this place. You know, that's what we want. Because I think it's like literally like my brother's in there, my aunt is in there, my grandfather is the pastor. That's Lawrence Matthews, senior right there. Like these are my beloved family, relatives, loved ones. You know, my auntie who like exposed me to so much music growing up is in there with the cats and like giving me the guns and like all this stuff is like, that was my grandfather's guns who passed right before he passed when we put out another record green grow. But like that was his shotguns and like all of that stuff. Like this was my like that was at my granny house. You know what I mean? Like a lot of that. And like again, like what you said, I ain't got all of this other stuff. And even if I did have all of this stuff, some stuff is greater than you, you know what I mean? In terms of like what you trying to do and what walls we trying to break down. And you know, like, I was just talking to another artist from the city the other day and he was like, man, I'm trying to do this and do this. And like, and I'm like, yeah, bro, like we all need to be trying to do this. It's a concerted effort. You know what I mean? I'll be buddies or whatever. But like if you got the common goal of expanding this narrative, and I also had this common goal alongside my individual goals, it's going to change everything. Like people are already saying that Memphis is creating, adding to this much of the market, this much of the this, this much of the that. So what happens when we have more than just that one narrative? What happens then, like when we look at Atlanta and we go, Atlanta's the Mecca, is this that and the other? Well, Atlanta's had the shot. It's been able to represent everything. Atlanta got two chains, Alcat, Tia, also young, it's like they can show so many facets of who they are as Atlanta people. Memphis has not been allowed the chance to do that because our narrative keeps being spit back in our face that we just trap and we hood and we balance. And yes, we are those things, but we also are all the other people who live in and out of those things and in between those things. And they got stories to tell too. And so for me, it's real important to like be true. And that was another part of like when we talk about the transition from my previous name to where I am now, I couldn't be as true in that music. It started is that, but then you're younger and then people start to place an expectation on what you should create and what you should be and how you should present and it's doing well. So you feel incentivized as a young person in your twenties to do that. And you keep regurgitating this stuff and just trying to make it the best you can. But at some point you go, do I want to be performing this? Do I want to win a Grammy for this? Do I want to be performing this for millions of people? Do I see myself performing this for millions of people? Do I want to keep even singing these songs? They're great songs, but I got so much more I want to say. There's so much more I want to show. And when we talk about fantasy, most of the music videos that I created at that time period were all based in fantasy. They take place in my head. And it's because my real life, I felt like wasn't worth showing to be honest with you. And I didn't think nobody would care. You know what I mean? And at this point, again, you could get to this place where you go, it's so important or I'm being ripped at the scenes so much so that I'm a live and die with me. I'm just gonna live and die being Lawrence Matthews, this artist, whether people like me, love me, whether this works or it don't. And I say that in a song, I just might try this on my own just to see how far it gets just to see because I've never been able to fully be myself as an artist. You mess around, you name yourself some stupid when you're 19 years old or whatever it is and then it takes off. And now you this, and now you sign paperwork is this and all kinds of other stuff. And so now you have to live out this thing, you have expectations of something that you not even, you're not even that no more. And when do you get to evolve? When do you get to share something new? And if you got paperwork on you, never nigga, never. And I learned that in the visual art space, you make a great painting, they want you to keep making that painting, make it forever and ever and ever because we get to brand you this way. We don't care that you eat ball, we don't care that you wanna do photos, we don't care what you wanna do. We wanna want you to do what makes us money. You see what I'm saying? And so for me, when I stepped away from all of that, I was really like, you know, some cliches, you're like choosing me at the end of the day and being like, I'm gonna live and die is me. I'm gonna share this art is me, whether it fails or succeeds, my name is on it is me. So because of that, I'm gonna pour my heart, my soul, everything I got, every resource, every phone call I can make, and that's how I ended up even being back in this space again, is by being like, this is me, it's connected to me, not in a way of like, oh, this is just what I do. No, this is what I am. And so in that space, I got a call, email, get anybody I can to understand what I'm trying to do here to figure out how to fund it, to figure out how to share it with the world, to figure out how to maximize it. And that's, it is what it is, because it's me, it's literally me. That album is me, the success and failure of that is the success and life of death of me as a person is directly connected because that's the deal that I made with myself when we went into the studio to make that. And we were like, yo, this guy saved my life, or I'm gonna be out here fucked up, I'm gonna be out here throwing boxes or living in a way that I don't wanna live. Nigga, I tell you right now, I don't, uh-uh, I'll check out, I'm cool. That's not the life of when I've done it before. You see what I'm saying? All my niggas do it. And not the rent, but all my niggas throw boxes. All my niggas work for Amazon and FedEx and this place and that place and that place. They're factory workers. That's all that get produced. You see what I'm saying? My skills are art-based. I don't got no other skills. You see what I'm saying? So if I don't do this, I don't get to live. So it's everything for me to get this where it needs to go and share with as many people as possible and to share this narrative and to share this story because it's not just mine. It's a bunch of people who live that life who have those experiences. They may not be as specific, but they exist and they deserve to have a voice too, just like the drug dealer, just like the drug user, just like the pimp, whatever it is, whatever it is that you are, that you subscribe to, you know what I mean? Everybody should be able to tell a story and we haven't been allowed to do that. And that's an issue, you see what I'm saying? So yeah. Yeah, I'm just curious, man, because in the creative space, the big goal of a lot of creatives is to just be able to usually live off whatever their particular art form is. I assume many ascribe to be highly successful in it. And here you talk about your art background, man. It sounds like you were moving in a pretty good direction of being like a really top visual fine arts artist. So I'm just curious, what made you step away from that world and go into music? What was the thought process there? And then two, can you walk me through the emotions and the mind state you kind of had at that time, right? Like making the decisions to jump from this thing where I'm seeing momentum, I'm making a name, it's allowing me to build out. But, you know, there's this other thing that I wanna jump into. The easy answer to be honest with you is like, I just loved, I love music. I love music way more than anything else in the world to be honest with you. I ended up probably in the art space because it was incentivized. Like I tell people this all the time. I don't know if I was like destined to be some great visual artist or just people kept telling me to do it. And so like when you were a kid, we all draw. Y'all drew when y'all was kids. I don't know one person that didn't draw when they was a kid. I think some people just get told, hey, you should keep doing this or you should not, hey, you suck. But we all kind of suck. It's just like, it's kid drawings. You know what I mean? No kid ever drew a Picasso, you know what I mean? So it's just like, you just keep drawing. And so you go through school and everybody's like, you're gonna be an artist, you're gonna be a great artist. And I think I realized one day that most of that had been projected on to me. It sucks to find it out in your late 20s, but you find it out. You see what I'm saying? And so for me, I went to school for that. You know what I mean? Like that was, and for me to be honest with you, I went to school for art, did really, really well and then transferred to Maryland so I could be closer to New York. And I had low self-worth, low self-esteem. So I believed I couldn't get into school in New York. So I didn't even apply. I ended up applying to schools in Maryland. I was like, it's two hours away or whatever, I'm gonna take my time and like drive up to New York and work on music and try to get my demos to people and my mixtapes to people. And like, maybe I'll get signed. That never happened, right? I never even got to New York. I was so bogged down working and going to school and dealing with like substance abuse and women and all this other stuff that I just didn't do nothing. I got kicked out of school, came back to Memphis and locked in on visual art while making music at the same time. Cause like, you know, my mom was paying, you know, we struggling to be in school. I was barely in school every semester, always had some money, you know, left over or whatever, like in terms of like, I owed some money every semester and had to figure it out every single semester. And so at a certain point, it was about living up to what my mom and my grandmother and people had wanted for me. None of my niggas went to college. None of them, I'm the only male cousin that went to college, my dad didn't go to college, my uncles didn't go to college. So it was a lot being kind of put on me to do that. You know what I mean? And so I did it and I take it seriously, like I take everything else seriously and I was good, I'm great or whatever. And so, you know, I was doing very, very well and I'm very ambitious too. So I was like, yo, I really want to do this. I can do this. I want to be in a moma. And I felt that way for a while and like was succeeding and selling work. My work that I was selling was financing the music. Like I was able to buy my first live setup or speakers or microphones that ended that awful painting money. You see what I'm saying? So that was my day job. The fact that I was a visual artist and then I'm doing city commissions and stuff. So I'm able to like take 10K, buy this piece of equipment and that piece of equipment to record music. But everybody who knew me knew I cared more about the music than anything in the world. It just was so much harder to do and it costs a lot of money, right? And then I started getting into photography. So now at this point it's straight numbers, right? And that is probably bad to tell people but like film, I do a lot of film photography stuff. A lot of it's about gentrification and displacement, black neighborhoods in the city, specifically in the south and stuff, but in Memphis. And that's what I got popular for, like more popular for and got a lot more money for, right? So I buy a roll of film, roll of film with $5 or something like that, $6 is B and H is high, right? I take 36 exposures. I take 36 photos. If I get 10, it's good. Let's say I get 20, it's good. It's a good night. I get 20 good photos of what I'm documenting. And then let's say five of them sell and they sell for $6,000 a pop. I'm straight. And I got a little bit to live, a little bit to invest in my music. And I always invested way more in my music than I did in my living. I didn't give a damn about how I was living. I was living foul, you know what I mean? But everything was going into the music because people really knew, people who knew me knew that's what I care about more than anything. And people would pressure me sometimes to be like, why are you doing so many things? Why do you da, da, da, da, da? Because they see what they deem as a successful art career when in reality, I didn't wanna do like, I seen what you gotta do to get where you need to go in the visual art world. And I didn't wanna do that shit. Like getting plucked in the way that they can get plucked, being made and commodified and taken advantage of in a way that they can get taken advantage of which I've also experienced. I've been fucked in music, right? I've been fucked in music multiple times, but I kept going. Every time I got fucked in the visual art world, it left a stain on me that made me just not care as much. And I looked at that and I said, if I'll fight through fire, flame and everything in the world to keep sharing music with people, right? No matter the cost, no matter whatever, whatever but I won't do that over here. Maybe this is what I really care about. You know what I mean? Because when you young, you got so many people projecting on you, you don't really know what you wanna be, you just know what you good at. And so you try everything under the sun because I was good at a lot. So I'm trying a bunch of different things. But at the end of the day, nothing made me happier, nothing made me more excited. Nothing made me get out of bed more than music. And at a point, again, in that transition point, I go, I need to shave away every single thing that ain't really what I wanna be doing. Or it is not bringing me the fulfillment and joy that I need as a human being. So I stopped, you know, showing visual art. I still was selling some stuff here and there to specific collectors. There were people I knew. But I really stopped showing. I left the nonprofit world because that world is shiesty. And I really couldn't deal with that no more. I was just like, I'm out of here. I left the nonprofit world, left the gallery that I was with, that I worked seven years to bring into fruition. I left there. I stopped doing city commissions. I put everything to the side. Everything, if you was funny in my life, I put you over there. And I said, I'm moving in this direction because I really felt like I was asking so much of the universe and so much of this music that I could not give my all to it. You see what I'm saying? And in reality, all the years prior, I had been given 40% here, 30% here, 20% there. And I was doing okay. But the goals and the dreams that I had for what I wanted to do musically required 100%. And when I sat back and said, nigga, you ain't never actually gave 100% to music. Do it. See what happens. You've been splitting your time and your energy with all these different things for 10 years. You've been an artist, filmmaker, this and then the multidisciplinary blah, blah, blah, community leader, activist, arts advocate, blah, blah, blah, all these things were like, put all that on the back burner and give your music 10 years. Give you, and let's start it. And so like when I tell people, 2023 was the first year of my life where every single day I woke up, all I did was focus on music. Nothing else, my music and my health and my growth as a human being and a man, you know what I mean? But outside of that, it was music. And I didn't see what changes have transpired in that little amount of time. And I go, damn, if I would have been doing this, but it wasn't for me to do back then. I had to learn a bunch. I had to like go through the fire. I'm one of those people, I don't, I wanna be a person who just like has all the right things and knows what to do at the right time. But I've so far been a person that has to like be the first through the door. And when you're the first through the door, you might get booked. You know what I mean? You get hit in your jaws, somebody shoot you, somebody hit you, you bust through the door and you get fucked over. And then you learn and then you come back and then you peek through the door. This to I, now's a good time to go. That's who I am. And so for me, when we talk about age, like I'm 32 years old, I ain't got no shame in that I need it all that time. I had a label meeting last year where I told the exec, I said, you wouldn't want to sign me at 21. So thank God that I'm what I am now because this nigga is completely different than that nigga. You know what I mean? And for my own personal understanding and growth, I wouldn't have wanted to get signed back then. This man here today is prepared for everything that he's trying to manifest and to bring into fruition. That young nigga was not. And he lived the life of a nigga that was not. Everything that I bumped up against was not that. So when you say like, what was the thing? It's really love. It's really love and it sounds cliche, but I love this music shit. Like I don't know many people who love this music shit. Like I'm obsessive about this music shit. I love, I love music. That's my nigga. You know what I mean? Like we like this with ours. And so anybody who know me, I don't talk about nothing else. I talk about the arts. But when we get to talking about that music though, and not necessarily my music, I don't believe in talking about my music. I'm talking about just music, the history of music. I'm obsessed. I love it's the greatest thing that we've done. It's one of the greatest things that we've done, but I also love film. And eventually I want to get in there too. As you know, as we see from the video, but that's all through the lens of music. I got introduced to film through the lens of music. When I was younger, my cousin, y'all seen Goodfellas. We all seen Goodfellas. But you remember that soundtrack to Goodfellas? How like holding it was? That's why I was like, yo, you get to do this. And then I started to dig into that. So music is my life at this stage in my life and who I am at 32 years old. Music means more than me to anything. I, you know, it means more than me to anything. I love it. It brings me to perform, to share it, to create something dope, to like collaborate with people, to like refashion things, to sit there in the studio and like go through samples and hear this thing and channel this energy or hear this way you can flip this. And like put these, it's amazing. Amazing. So I tell niggas all the time, people I know they be like, man, I'm thinking about getting the music. I'm like, nigga, you sure? It should take, it'll take your whole, it's obsessive, it's beautiful. You know what I mean? It's enticing. You know what I mean? But is either I'm crazy or I'm put here to do this. And so I choose to believe that I'm put here to do this. You know what I mean? Oh, battery. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Okay. Well, you know, good little top, good little line. So yeah. Now that's really, I don't know, man. Like everything you said was beautiful, bro. Like it's good to hear, you know, an artist who loves it is legitimately trying to figure it out, understands the business behind it and all that as well and wants to make that work. But again, at the end of the day, you love it, right? Because there's so many people who don't, who don't love it and they're just playing the game. One for money, cool. And then there's other ones who just feel like they're cosplaying to me, right? They like the fame or the things associated with it or they like the idea of an artist, but they don't really truly study it. And I just like, so it's like, are you an artist beyond just wanting to put something out and get people to like what you do? Like, cause you don't know too much about the arts beyond your own output. You get what I mean? And so hearing you talk about that obsessiveness beyond your own music, right? Like that's what I love to hear, which goes back to all the things that you talk about referencing over and over again. The greatest artists that we talk about are always referencing some other form of art. It's history, it's research, like, you know, I remember I got in trouble in college. I said, I said, this artist, it is niggas that make art. And niggas were so offended by that. And I get it, I was being a asshole. But at the same time, it's like, no, that's real. Like, and I think those people, they get into the game, they don't struggle for 10 years trying to make this shit happen because they go right to where the money is. I'm not going to where the money is. I want to make money because it's my life, right? But I'm going to where my soul is and where my heart and my spirit is. And I want you to feel that in the music. I want you to hear it and I wouldn't be here. Like I tell my management, anybody we can have meetings with, I say, me being right here is a miracle. If y'all knew the ins and outs of my existence in my life and everything that I done been through to keep doing this when there's been times where it's been like, oh, lost it all. Oh, that didn't work. Like, people didn't understand this, whoop, whoop, whoop. Like, boot off, stay whoop, whoop. I just kept on my first show when I was, can't remember how old I was, maybe 20 or something or whatever. Niggas walked out, a whole half the room walked out because I was performing what I was performing. It was some different shit, but they walked out, walked out through me and everything. Like it was like, it was like a weird little setup in there. Niggas was walking in front of me and behind me. I'm sitting there trying to rap. And I remember, man, I was sick. I had invited family. My girl was there. My family, I was sick. And I remember just not speaking. I just remember like going, we went to AHA. And I was sitting there. I ain't eating nothing. I was just sitting there. And I remember going like, I'm finna quit. And I was like, this is too embarrassing. This is too rough. And I remember I woke up the next day and was like, this will never happen to me again. I'm finna take control of how I do this. And I went and like saved up money for six months and bought my own microphones, my own speakers. And I started doing shows in my garage. And I was, I'm gonna do it like punk rock niggas. And then I went to the galleries. So it's just like, I love this shit. You know what I mean? Like, and I studied this shit and I'm obsessive about it. If I wasn't making music, I'd probably be like a history professor or something. And then like with the visual art stuff, it was very easy for me to make the type of art I was making because it's so research based. A lot of it is about, a lot of it has been about, you know, black circumstances, black life in the South and in Memphis. So it's research based. So I'm spending all this time researching and then making the piece based in that research. And so with the music, it's kind of the same thing. I just love the music board. So I'm sitting here diving into blues, diving into these early art forms and putting together and fashioning what this is and channeling that spirit and that energy that was present, you know, in that stuff. You know what I mean? And I'm gonna keep doing that. Like, you know, we got this album again. I said that album was done in 2022. And, you know, we're currently mixing it and trying to get the support behind it and like talking to people and meeting people and like they just taking me around, you know, introducing me to folks or whatever. But I'm six records into another project or whatever that's pulling from another energy. You know what I mean? And I know what I wanna do. But I've known what I wanted to do for years. I just don't know how it looked like. Like I don't know how to get there or whatever. But like, that's why I finally thank God got a team around me that like, I've never had a team. Never had a team. All this time, I had never had a team. I had a manager for like six months before I like blew up the Dunliftership or whatever, which was my last name. My last name was Dunliftership. But I blew it up or whatever. And so I never really got to experience what it felt like to have support. I was always carrying this thing up a hill by myself, you know what I mean? With the people that people always thought, especially back home, people thought I was way more like successful and popping than I was. And it was like, Brian got no money. All my money go to music. You know what I mean? But because I had a little bit more than other people, especially coming from the environment that we're coming from, that's enough. That's enough. It's enough to get you popped too. Which is a whole other thing, you know what I mean? So it's always been a treacherous role to like navigate just being able to live. You know what I mean? Just being able to like share your stuff, you know, it's really difficult because the bar is so low in terms of like what being on looks like when you come from where we from, just having some visibility is you own. It was like, bro, I was famous in town and was broke. And then, you know, got a little whatever, whatever. And then went broke again, like purposely when it broke, pouring my money into things. And so people don't really always know what the role to like figuring your dreams out looks like or whatever. And that's why I appreciate like platforms like this one because it gives a transparent like look for like artists to kind of detail their stories and like what choices they made and what mistakes they made and how they figured these things out. And so it's like, for me, like, that's the stuff that I look at to keep going. Like, you know, now again, I got a team now. But back then I was in Memphis. There's no infrastructure, no support, no team, no OGs, no nothing. And so your belief has to come purely from within, which ain't always sustainable. So you get on these apps and you get on YouTube and you look at the content and these interviews of the artists that are doing things you would like to do and you pull motivation and inspiration from them folks. So to, you know, even be, you know, on this platform is like, it's very, you know, you know, circular for me. And I mean, it's like very full circle because there's been times where I've been, you know, locked on the clips where a nigga is talking about his journey and I'm like, yo, I'm at that place. Okay, okay. I'm not the only one that felt this, okay. And the other platforms, you know what I mean? We ain't gonna shout them out. But like, you know what I mean? Other platforms where you, you know, where you hop on there and this nigga's talking about their journey. It's like, it's been beautiful watching like Vince Staples go around and talk about how hard it was to get that show off the ground and what his career has been like, that is more akin to me than somebody being plucked out of obscurity because they have potential and given a shot. Like that ain't never been my story. I never, I never, I had people believing in me, but I had, it wasn't necessarily people that could always do something. You know what I mean? It'd be one thing to lay it to a thing, to lay it to a thing, to lay it to a thing, to lay it to a thing, to lay it to a thing. And then you could take advantage of that opportunity. You know, it just might be somebody like, this dude is dope. But it wasn't like, hey, come here, come with me and da-da-da, like I'm just getting to that space where I made something that's strong enough and locked in enough for anybody to even invest the time and energy into me in a way that's non-exploitable, you know what I mean? So, you know, definitely, definitely shout out to y'all for like providing that type of platform for niggas to like go through and talk about the stuff that we talk about, you know what I mean? So, yeah. Appreciate it, man. Appreciate it, man. Yeah, man, appreciate you having you on, man. I definitely think your story and so much of what you laid out here is gonna help. Like, just not only artists, but just people in general who are actually like struggling to achieve a dream in general, you know what I mean? And, you know, and I know as you continue to build and get more visibility for people to be able to come back to this, you know, in contrast where you are versus everything you were saying and talking about right now, going back into the history is gonna be beautiful, man. So, I appreciate having you on once again, man. Yo, everybody, this is Lawrence Matthews. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessaries. I'm Bryan Manchean. And I'm Corey. And we out. Peace.